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Why Harris (With Beyoncé in Tow) Is Heading to Solidly Red Texas

Appearing alongside a pop superstar and talking about abortion rights in a state with a strict ban, the vice president is hoping to deliver viral moments that will resound in faraway battlegrounds.

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Kamala Harris waving from the steps of Air Force Two.

Vice President Kamala Harris boarding Air Force Two on Thursday in Philadelphia. She plans to visit Houston on Friday for a campaign rally featuring Beyoncé and Willie Nelson.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Reid J. EpsteinJ. David Goodman

By Reid J. Epstein and J. David Goodman

Reporting from Houston

Oct. 25, 2024, 5:07 a.m. ET

Vice President Kamala Harris might have traveled on Friday to Philadelphia or Milwaukee for the umpteenth time, but motivating tuned-out voters in battleground states required something different.

So her campaign engineered a trip to Houston — the largest city in Texas, decidedly not a presidential battleground state — where she would be joined at a rally by Beyoncé and the country music legend Willie Nelson, both beloved natives of the state. Their ability to transcend traditional politics, Harris aides hope, will deliver the sort of viral content that cuts through a cluttered media environment.

Ms. Harris’s rally in Houston will focus on the strict abortion ban enacted in Texas after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and is meant to offer a warning about the potential spread of such restrictions to voters in faraway states who will soon decide this year’s presidential election.

In short, the Harris team wants to put what happens deep in the heart of Texas on display for the whole country to see.

If it takes Vice President Harris to elevate the voices of women in Houston so they are heard in Madison and Kalamazoo and Pittsburgh, that’s what we’re going to do,” said Trey Martinez Fischer, the Democratic leader in the Texas State House.

Just about everything related to Ms. Harris’s Houston trip is engineered to create news that will reach voters in the battleground states. Before the rally with Beyoncé and Mr. Nelson, she is scheduled to record a podcast interview with the popular podcaster Brené Brown, a University of Houston professor and vulnerability researcher who has an audience of millions that skews heavily female.

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A picture of Brené Brown, a University of Houston professor and popular podcaster, as she sits onstage during a podcast.

Brené Brown, a University of Houston professor and a popular podcaster, is scheduled to interview Ms. Harris before her rally on Friday.Credit...Suzanne Cordeiro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ms. Harris is following a path traveled recently by former President Donald J. Trump, who held campaign events in Aurora, Colo., and Coachella, Calif., and is set to appear on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York. The Trump campaign has not invested in and does not expect to win any of those states, just as Ms. Harris is not pretending she has a chance to win Texas.

Mr. Trump is planning his own Texas sojourn on Friday, heading to Austin to record Joe Rogan’s podcast. He is also scheduled to appear with Senator Ted Cruz, the Republican who is being challenged by Representative Colin Allred.

It is the latest evidence that in modern presidential campaigns, viral content in social media feeds is just as desirable as a segment on local TV news in battleground states. Harris aides calculate that those stations will probably end up showing footage of Ms. Harris and the music stars anyway.

Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump have dispensed with what used to be a flurry of interviews that presidential nominees gave to local television stations. Barack Obama, during his campaigns, and Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years ago often stacked several local TV interviews in a row to ensure that they had a presence in markets even while traveling elsewhere.

Ms. Harris has held a few local interviews, with outlets including Philadelphia and Atlanta television last month, but she has generally focused on platforms with national audiences. Her team believes this makes her appearances more likely to be aggregated and shared beyond the market where an interview aired.

When she appeared this month on two popular podcasts, “Call Her Daddy” and “All the Smoke,” 26 percent of likely voters heard her speak, according to a poll released this week by USA Today and Suffolk University.

Then there is the matter of making a national argument about abortion rights, with Texas as ground zero. Ms. Harris has used the state’s near-total abortion ban as a cautionary tale in her stump speeches, reminding audiences that physicians face a potential death penalty for providing abortion care that was legal before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization two years ago.

The campaign has used Kate Cox and Amanda Zurawski, Texas women who became high-profile abortion rights activists after they sued Texas over its restrictions, as prominent surrogates who have traveled to other states. Ms. Zurawski, who addressed the Democratic National Convention, is among the speakers expected to address the rally on Friday.

“There’s no state in the country that is as clear of an example of the devastation millions of women are experiencing post-Dobbs than Texas,” said Skye Perryman, a Texas native who is the president of Democracy Forward, an advocacy group that filed lawsuits against the Texas abortion laws. “These are issues for all people in the country, not just for those who may live in a state that gets particular attention this time of year.”

While Democrats have dreamed of making Texas competitive in presidential elections, the political realities and financial costs of competing in a state with 20 media markets have led the party to invest its resources elsewhere.

No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994. Ms. Harris’s Houston rally appears to be the first for a Democratic presidential nominee in Texas this late in a campaign since President Bill Clinton went to San Antonio in the final days before the 1996 election.

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Bill Clinton with Al Gore and Gov. Ann Richards of Texas and several others, standing and waving on a boat floating down the San Antonio River in the Texas city. 

Bill Clinton, second from left, visited Texas during both his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. In August 1992, he was accompanied by Gov. Ann Richards, left, who remains the last Democratic politician to win statewide office in Texas.Credit...Stephan Savoia/Associated Press

“It was a different state,” said Garry Mauro, who ran Mr. Clinton’s campaigns in Texas and stood onstage with Mr. Clinton in front of the Alamo on Nov. 2, 1996, three days before Election Day. Mr. Mauro, a former land commissioner of the state, was also among the last Democratic officials elected statewide before Republicans began asserting their dominance.

Coming to Houston brings Ms. Harris to Harris County, the most populous county in Texas and the beating heart of its Democratic base.

Huge turnout in the county, home to 2.7 million registered voters, is an absolute must for Democrats for them to have any hope of overcoming the significant advantage that Republicans have had in rural areas of the state. The Harris County Democratic Party has calculated that around 500,000 likely Democrats in the county did not vote in 2020.

Some Harris aides briefly argued this week, before it was revealed that Beyoncé would appear at the Friday rally, that her visit was meant to help Mr. Allred in his Senate race.

But she has not traveled to Ohio or Montana to aid their vulnerable Democratic senators. And top Texas Democrats seemed unaware of Ms. Harris’s Houston plans before they were revealed publicly.